


Two Men Shall Be in the Field

by AQLM



Category: Iron Man - Fandom, Spiderman - Fandom, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, infinity war - Fandom
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Contemplation, Gen, No Plot/Plotless, No Smut, Thinking, all the sads, spoiler warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-05
Updated: 2018-05-05
Packaged: 2019-05-02 08:49:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14541096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AQLM/pseuds/AQLM
Summary: Tony Stark takes a drink.Infinity Wars spoilers follow.





	Two Men Shall Be in the Field

In his sophomore year of college, Tony Stark had taken a sociology class. Well, it was more appropriate to say Tony Stark had sat in a classroom full of sociology majors, all of whom had to take this class and most of whom were attractive young women. Merely sitting in the back ogling would be insufficient to obtain the social collateral he desired. He spent just enough time paying attention so he could ask for tutoring sessions, one-on-one of course, without looking truly idiotic. That is how he can recall the name Robert Merton as he is flying over half a world.

The law of unintended consequences. Merton’s masterpiece.

People understood it as the broader version of Murphy’s law. When you make a decision and the outcome is something you didn’t even know could exist. Kind of like when you told your buddy he needed to get out there and date, so he runs off with your girlfriend. Definitely like funding a rebel group to overthrow the bad guys only to find out the rebel group is even worse. Hello Taliban.

In the itching reaches of his brain, Tony contemplates all the ways people screw up when they don’t think ahead.

People aren’t rational. He’s been a CEO long enough to understand that. Profit means giving people what they want even if it’s not best in the long term. Merton called that bit “imperious immediacy of interest,”. People are terrible at delayed gratification. Who gives a damn about tomorrow when you could get what you wanted today?

That was a problem with the short human life. If people contemplated the consequences of their actions for more than five goddamn minutes, they might change how they behave. If they could see what happened 100 years from now after they said that sentence, spent that dollar, killed that man, they might change what they did. Time paradoxes be damned. It would be great to show everyone a little glimpse of their worst future so they would shape the hell up. ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ where Jimmy Stewart was blitzed out on PCP.

He touches down on the roof of the New Avengers Facility and goes inside. The panic within is more muted - they are professionals after all. Half of their staff, half of their engineers, half of their janitors. Half of the plants on windowsills. Half of the therapy dogs brought to soothe the overtaxed scientists over in the D wing.

Pepper finds him, embraces him, asks him questions he doesn’t pay attention to, hears him give answers that don’t matter. He puts on the suit that marks his transition to spokesman. He goes outside, half as many journalists, half as many government officials, half as many voices clamoring for an explanation. He gives his speech, he defers all questions, and he goes back inside. Someone else will need to handle the fallout for a little while.

Tony locks himself in his office, goes into his desk, and pulls out a Bible. Someone along the way said he should have one around for times like this, so he stole it from a hotel. A bit of digging later, he finds the passages Thanos probably didn’t read when he made his decision to obliterate half of the universe with a goddamn finger snap. They don’t bring any comfort. They don’t bring any resolution. He didn’t think they would, but it was worth a try.

Tony closes the Bible and tosses it on the coffee table. As an afterthought, he takes a coaster and flicks it on top of the gold embossed cover.

There was a terrible book series a few years back. “Left for Dead” or “The Living Dead.” Something like that. The premise was the world breaking down because all the good people were abducted into heaven by the angry Christian God. Chaos reigned, the world burned, and somehow Satan oversaw the UN? Rough stuff.

Nothing so organized happened here. Half the organisms. Half the grass in a park. Half the pigeons in New York City. Hell, maybe half the viral load in a guy with AIDS if Thanos considered a virus alive. See, a bit of good in all of this.

More than half of humans would be dead by Thanos’ actions. The planes that crashed when the pilots vanished. The patients who died when their doctors crumbled. The infant held by a mother who left him four feet above the ground when she dissolved. The mass suicides by cults who proved the end had come. The mass famines from insufficient farmers with insufficient crops. The natural human despair that leads to a reckless aversion for life. 

It was likely Thanos intended that. He foresaw that. 

From his long and ever-present gaze, Thanos knew removing half would lead to removing more than half. At least on earth, there would be no worry of any species’ overpopulation. Then again, if the wrong half of the wolf packs died out, deer might proliferate again. There might be an explosion in Lyme disease and all the corn would be eaten by endless herds of rampaging Bambi. Humanity would die of starvation. Take that, Thanos.

Tony finds the bottle of scotch he swore he would stop drinking and pours it in a tumbler he promised Pepper he got rid of. He sits on the couch, takes a long drink, and puts it down on the coaster. He closes his eyes and runs his fingers through his hair.

Tony is a scientist. He does computers. He does electronics. His life at its base is a series of if-then statements. If condition X, then condition Y. If action foo, then action bar. He was careful with his investments – you get a sense after a while of what’s going to take off and what’s going to crumble before the product leaves the factory. He’d made a killing on the stock market doing what other people wish they’d done when Bill Gates popped up on the scene. But there was no way Tony could have guessed a little computer program would decrease malaria because the multibillionaire set up nets to kill mosquitoes.

The law of unintended consequences.

Somewhere along the way, a kid decided to change the world. Somewhere along the way, a kid decided he knew better than Tony what he was going to do in his life. And he chased that dream with every ounce of teenage energy that a kid like that could muster up. 10,000 times more than Tony had at the age. Maybe a thousand times more than Tony had now. A kid that made Tony sit back and think maybe being single playboy wasn’t the best use of his talents. He and Pepper could make something pretty damn good if they laid out and made it.

A single breath and half the world’s turtles, half the world’s amoebae fluttered away in shattered pieces of mirror. A second of realization for most men and then the end. But not this kid. This kid saw it, like a bullet fired from a gun, like a car speeding down the highway, like blood gushing out of a stab wound held by trembling hands. Impotent horror. The kid didn’t have the words for it, but he knew that fear and that was how he died. Terrified. Apologetic.

Gripping him with every ounce of strength, this kid, holding on to Tony because he thought this was the man who’s going to save him again. This was the only man in the world he trusted with his life. And Tony, who could do nothing but grip back, say nothing to ease the passage, give not even a single moment of false comfort. He hadn’t said a thing. Tony hadn’t known the words, either.

He drains the glass. Pours another. Drains that too. Ignores the knock at the door. Ignores the shouting of his name. Goes to put the bottle in the recycling, thinks better of it, tosses it in the trash, and cracks open another. Sits down and closes his eyes again.

He should have said something. It should have been more than a question. He should have seen that fear for what it was. A premonition of his own fate. A doctor once told Tony that a patient who asks, with a cold and quiet voice, if she is going to die already knows the outcome. The almost dead do not scream when they know it does no good. All Peter wanted was reassurance and Tony had given nothing. 

The law of unintended consequences.

Thanos had killed half the Avengers. Half the villains and the heroes across the universe. Half of all living things. The rest he left clinging to the threads of life that slipped out of the weave with no cross-stitch to hold them. 

Some civilizations would rise and flourish nonetheless - as a wise idiot once said, life finds a way - but they wouldn’t be recognizable. In a universe where life is arbitrary and fate is determined by the whims of an ancient and maddened God, the rule of law would be no law. The chaos of every crumbling and ruined civilization would become the norm. There could be no progress and no joyful hope when no force can keep it from slipping away. 

Fragmenting like a man he held in his arms until his weight became air.

The intent had been to kill Peter. It would kill Tony too.

**Author's Note:**

> Merton's Treatise is found here: https://www.uzh.ch/cmsssl/suz/dam/jcr:00000000-7fb2-5367-0000-0000522e4c47/03.14_merton_unanticipated_consequences.pdf


End file.
